Tassat Crypto Derivatives on the Horizon

Financial technology firm Tassat becomes the 19 company to acquire a Swap Execution Facility (SEF) in the U.S., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published in a press release on 7 November.

According to the announcement, on Thursday the CFTC approved the transfer of the SEF registration from the New York-based financial services firm trueEX to Tassat, which was the first hurdle in the firm’s bid to launch a fully-regulated crypto derivatives exchange.

The transfer happened almost four months after the two companies reached an “agreement in principle”. Tassat is still waiting to secure trueEx’s Designated Contract Market (DCM) registration.

Tassat, which was previously known as trueDigital, revealed its plans to launch a crypto derivatives exchange with full oversight from the CFTC back in July. The company hopes to offer institutional investors physically-delivered Bitcoin swaps and other products.

When the two companies reached an “agreement in principle” back in July, the CEO of Tassat, Thomas Kim, said:

“Adding the exchange to our ecosystem delivers a complete end-to-end offering, currently unavailable today, that encompasses tokenization, payments, market data and settlement for the benefit of our clients and partners.”

According to the Thursday press release, the CFTC decided to transfer trueEX SEF, which it acquired in January 2016, to Tassat as the companies fulfilled all the requirements for transfer.

They were able to provide evidence that Tassat would be able to operate in compliance with provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations applicable to SEFs after the registration is transferred.

Created in early 2018, Tassat has been actively participating in the crypto space. Back in March, when it was still known as trueDigital, the company partnered up with crypto data firm Kaiko and analytics company Inca Digital Securities in order to offer wider access to its over-the-counter reference rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum.